If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1887, Harry Salsinger worked in his hometown, Dayton, and Cincinnati, before joining the Detroit News at the age of 20. Sal, as his close friends called him, remained with the Motor City newspaper for over 50 years, following the exploits of Tiger ballplayers from Ty Cobb to Al Kaline. For all but two years of his career at the Detroit News, Salsinger held the position of sports editor.

A former president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, Salsinger was well-versed in many sports, but his forte was unquestionably baseball. His column was titled simply "The Umpire." The byline of Salsinger meant solid, factual writing in an interesting style. Westbrook Pegler called Salsinger "the best sportswriter in the country." Bob Broeg recalled that Salsinger was "a dignified man who brought figurative as well as actual stature into the profession."

Salsinger died at the age of 71 on Thanksgiving Day, 1958.

wikipedia---From Wikipedia, the free
Harry G. Salsinger (1887 - 1958) (more commonly credited as H.G. Salsinger) was a sports editor of The Detroit News for 49 years. In 1907, he started writing for The Cincinnati Post. Two years later, he began working at The Detroit News as sports editor, a position he held until his death in 1958. He covered 50 World Series, two Olympic Games, and many other sports including football, golf, tennis, and boxing. Salsinger was also a president of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which posthumously awarded him the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for his baseball writing in 1968. He was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2002Harry's photo/entry in Who's Who in Major League Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 510.

Cleveland sports editor;
Moved from Youngston, OH to Cleveland in 1907.
Cleveland News sports editor, 1907 - 1960; His column was entitled, "Between You and Me."
Liked to bet the horses, play golf.
His son became known sports writer.

St. Louis sports writer;
Graduated Washington University (St. Louis, MO),
St. Louis Republic sports department; Began as a reporter in 1912.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
Went to Cuba with St. Louis Federals in 1915;
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 1917-25, golf / general sports; Changed to BB in 1926-58, covered all Cardinal games & World Series. Sports editor, April, 1946 - July, 1958. Had evening sports program on radio station KSK for 15 years.

Authored the following books:
The Gashouse Gang and a Couple of Other Guys, 1945 (compilation of his ballplayer profiles for the Saturday Evening Post)
Assisted Rogers Hornsby with his book, My Kind of Baseball, 1953
Frank Frisch: The Fordham Flash, 1962
----------------------------------------------------------------
J. Roy Stockton, Dan Daniel, and Fred Lieb were the recipients of the 1972 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Long-time baseball writer J. Roy Stockton first entered the world of sportswriting when he covered spring training for the 1915 St. Louis Federal League baseball club in Cuba. While in Havana, he also reported on the upset victory of Jess Willard over Jack Johnson. At the age of 25, Stockton hired on at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where he remained for over 40 years.

The witty Stockton was author of the baseball classic The Gas House Gang and a Couple of Other Guys, but his journalistic career was not confined to the written word. For over 15 years Stockton hosted a radio sports program and was part of the first telecast of a baseball game in St. Louis in 1947.

In nominating Stockton for Commissioner of Baseball, a position that eventually went to Ford Frick, Red Smith referred to Stockton as "a man of many gifts and fierce integrity, whose years as one of the country's finest baseball writers have given him a rich background of experience and knowledge."

A former president of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, Stockton also served briefly as president of the Florida State League.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1952-----------------------------------------------------------------------------1933

Warren was more than a baseball writer. He was also considered an expert in football, boxing and horse racing. Mr. Brown was one of the earliest writers to laud the coming greatness of Red Grange.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warren Brown, John Drebinger, and John F. Kieran were the recipients of the 1973 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

For more than half a century, Warren Brown consistently gave composition and expertise to sports pages across the country. A graduate of St. Ignatius College (now the University of San Francisco) where he starred playing baseball, Brown joined the San Francisco Bulletin in 1916. In 1922, following his service in World War I, Brown moved to New York. The next year he was appointed sports editor of Hearst's Chicago Herald-Examiner. Brown later became the first sports editor of Marshall Field's Sun in 1941 and was a columnist for the Chicago American (later Chicago Today).

A tall, spare figure, Brown brought to the typewriter the same sharp, biting wit that made him famous as master of ceremonies in the after-dinner circuit. The man who was responsible for nicknaming Red Grange "The Galloping Ghost," Brown wrote books about the Cubs and White Sox. Starting in 1920, Brown saw every World Series for fifty years. Both a daily columnist and a working assignment man, Brown's witty and humorous remarks are still retold in the press box.
----------------------------------------------------------------Biography Resource Center: Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2005.
Warren Brown was considered one of the top sports writers and editors of the twentieth century, his lengthy career covering forty-five World Series and forty Kentucky Derbies. Beginning his journalism career in 1916, he proved himself to be a versatile and prolific newsman, skillfully covering hard news as well as the sports stories that made his reputation. Brown was well-educated and noted for his "exceptional mastery of the English language, his encyclopedic memory, and his razor-sharp wit. He excelled at coining memorable phrases, whether behind a typewriter or behind a podium, and in either venue his humor could be sarcastic or benign--as easily capable of deflating as well as inflating," remarked Richard Brodenker in Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Brown was born in California and grew up in San Francisco. He developed a strong interest in sports performers, both contemporary and historical. Baseball and prizefighting, two of his favorite sports, were flourishing in San Francisco at that time, providing him with many heroes. He progressed so rapidly in his studies that at the age of eleven he was sent to high school. He was athletic as well as studious, playing baseball in college and eventually starting as a professional player with Sacramento's team in the Pacific Coast League. In his first appearance for Sacramento as a pinch hitter, Brown hit safely off former Chicago White Sox pitching star Doc White. Despite this and other thrilling moments, he returned to college at the conclusion of the 1914 season.

After graduation, Brown worked part-time at the San Francisco Bulletin, earning five dollars a week writing notes on semiprofessional baseball. He was soon publishing stories with his own byline, and his career was launched. After serving in World War I, he returned to the Bulletin but soon was employed at William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Call-Post, where he became the sports editor while still in his early twenties. He later worked again for the Bulletin, where he was the first writer to predict that Jack Dempsey would take the heavyweight crown from Jess Willard.

Besides his sports coverage, Brown also wrote reviews of musical and vaudeville performances and assisted in covering news stories ranging from political conventions to murder trials. He proved his adeptness at investigative reporting when he and fellow journalist Edward T. Gleeson uncovered some wrongdoings in the Pacific Coast League and published their findings. Eventually the league's president and several team owners were replaced. Working in California at that time, Brown could hardly fail to be immersed in the so-called "Hearst style," which Brodenker noted can be "identified by trick idiom, beautiful phrasing, and vivid imagery. Brown, however, held steadfastly to the concept of simplicity."

Brown's knowledge of boxing and his admiration of Jack Dempsey provided another career opportunity in 1921, when he took on the task of supervising the champion's press relations prior to a bout with Georges Carpentier. The job led him to Atlantic City on the East Coast. Though he returned to San Francisco in 1922, he had his sights set on a writing position for a New York paper, and it was not long before he had secured a position with the New York Evening Mail. Brown was now working in the same city as legendary sportswriters such as Heywood Broun, Damon Runyon, Grantland Rice, and Ring Lardner. He soon moved to the Hearst-owned New York Journal, but in 1923 the Hearst organization transferred him to the Chicago Herald and Examiner. By 1926 he had a column running six times a week in the paper, titled "So They Tell Me," which focused on a variety of sports performers, athletic competitions, sport oddities, and general human-interest items.

In the Midwest, one of Brown's loves was collegiate football, especially the teams of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois. There he became familiar with such legendary figures as coach Knute Rockne and halfback Red Grange, whom Brown nicknamed the "Galloping Ghost." Brown's friendship with Rockne led to his first book. Published in 1931, Rockne is a flattering autobiography of the football coach, who had died in a plane crash earlier that year. In the foreword to Brown's book, Notre Dame president Reverend Charles L. O'Donnell praised Brown, noting that his sketches provide a truthful portrait of Rockne. This sentiment was echoed by Casswell Adams, who stated in his New York Herald-Tribune Books review: "He writes of Rockne the man, and from him we learn of the humor, the genius, the generosity, the sincerity of the stocky, baldheaded coach. He, in a terse, not unpleasant style, hurriedly sketches the coach by telling us wisecracks, his satirical shafts." In this and other books, as in his shorter pieces, his work is typically "precise, insightful, and, at any given moment, witty, funny, angry, or scathing."

Brown continued to work for the Hearst corporation during the 1930s and into the 1940s, but signed on to Marshall Field's Chicago Sun early in the decade, taking his "So They Tell Me" column with him. He stayed with the Sun until 1946, when he returned to the Hearst organization. In 1947, he published Win, Lose, or Draw, which included Brown's reflections on his sportswriting career and his association with many great sporting personalities. New York Times critic Harold Kaese took a tongue-in-cheek look at the book: "By being so witty, entertaining and informative, Warren probably has done the sportswriting industry irreparable harm in writing his memoirs.... There will be no salary increases in the near future for sports writers whose publishers read Brown's expose of our charming circle and find it a strong argument for less money and longer hours."

Brown also had a long-standing sideline as an after-dinner speaker, which developed into regular guest appearances on Bing Crosby's nationally-broadcast network radio program, and occasional spots on other popular shows. He even wrote some of his own material for these programs. He also became active in working with the National Baseball Hall of Fame. His career stretched on for more than five decades, and he continued to write well into his senior years. At the age of seventy-eight, he contributed a column, "Down Memory Lane," to Baseball Digest magazine.

Brown relied on anecdotes to convey his impressions of the sporting world. In reviewing Rockne, Caswell Adams reported that Brown probably knew the legendary Notre Dame football coach "more intimately than any other newspaper man. Similarly, in his later books on Chicago's baseball teams, Brown added an entertaining style to a foundation of facts. "Brown has done an exhaustive job of research and brightened the resulting text with a leavening of anecdotes," wrote Robert Cromie in his review of The Chicago White Sox.

Brown died in 1978, at the age of eighty-six.

PERSONAL INFORMATION: Born January 3, 1894, in CA; died, November 19, 1978, in Forest Park, IL; son of Patrick and Hanore (Boyle) Brown; married Mary Olive Burns, August 23, 1919; children: Bill, Roger, Mary Elizabeth Brown Rempe. Education: Received degree from University of San Francisco. Military/Wartime Service: Member of Coast Artillery Corps and Corps Intelligence, World War I.

O.B. Keeler is best known for his deep and lasting friendship with Bobby Jones. He was an Atlanta Journal sportswriter who took an interest in a young, aspiring Bobby Jones. Amazingly, O.B. Keeler was able to be at all of his major championships, logging roughly 150,000 miles of travel. He notated just about every detail about Bobby Jones' golf career, and put it down in a definitive biography, Portrait of a Champion (1931), which is still in print today.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Bobby Jones/O.B. Keeler are seen here with Jones' 1930 grand slam trophies:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------the British Open, the U.S. Amateur, the British Amateur and the U.S. Open.

Joe Vila (Sports editor. Born, Boston, MA, Sept. 16, 1866; died, New York, NY, Apr. 27, 1934.) Among the more significant and influential sportswriters and sports editors of the first third of the 20th century was Joseph Spencer Vila.

Starting in his native Boston, Vila went through a series of newspapers both there and in New York, where he moved in 1889. His first New York job was with Hearst’s Journal where, with football writing in its infancy, he introduced a more contemporary play-by-play of the 1889 Harvard-Princeton game.

Vila moved to the most sports-oriented daily paper in town, the Herald. In 1893, he was hired by the city’s most important daily, The Sun. Vila got his first important beat in horse racing, where he spent almost 10 years (1900-10) before anti-wagering laws nearly destroyed the industry and he was moved to baseball. He became sports editor of The Sun in March 1914.

Being sports editor also made him a columnist and his daily colum, entitled “Setting the Pace,” was to appear six days a week for over 20 years. Vila’s column was, unlike those of many of his contemporaries, very factual and straightforward, often historic and less opinionated. As sports editor, Vila sought to build a staff of solid, facile writers and aggressively recruited them. Will Wedge (q.v.) was a top ship news reporter from The Globe whom Vila converted to baseball. Other recruits included Frank Graham (q.v.), Grantland Rice (q.v.), and Dan Daniel (q.v.).

Many stayed with The Sun for decades. Vila remained a working writer as well as sports editor. He covered mostly racing and boxing once it was legalized in 1920. Vila was the first sportswriter to use a typewriter at ringside for boxing. He dictated to typist Billy Nash between rounds and had the resulting copy carried to a Western Union operator. Other reporters customarily wrote in longhand but rapidly began to switch to typewriters. Vila worked the opening of the spring meeting at Jamaica racetrack on Apr. 21, 1934, was taken ill the next day, reported to The Sun office on Monday, April 23, but left feeling sick and never returned.

Even in death, Vila had a fundamental influence. Managing editor Keats Speed decided to split the daily column and the sports editor’s responsibilities, a practice then followed only at The Times. Wilbur Wood (q.v.), a boxing writer, became sports editor, but Speed gave Graham (q.v.) the daily column. Graham brought an entirely modern approach to the column and began another fundamental change in sports coverage.(The Bill Shannon Biographical Dictionary of New York Sports is an open database of sports biographies maintained by Jordan Sprechman and Marty Appel.)

New York Times' Obituary---------Biographaphical Dictionary of American
April 28, 1934, pp. 15.-------------Journalism, edited by Joseph P. McKerns, 1989-------------------------Who's Who in Major League Baseball,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 505.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1934 Baseball Guide

Chicago sports writer;
Family moved to La Porte, Ind., 1919, he moved in with Uncle in Oak Park, Attended Northwestern (Chicago, IL), fall, 1926 - 1927,
Chicago Herald & Examiner, 1927-39, began as copy boy while in HS, began writing sports in 1927, FB & Basketball,
started writing baseball, 1929, covered White Sox. White Sox PR, 1939-?;
Chicago Sun-Times, January, 1942 - October 24, 1973
In December, 1933, he had to take 10.5 months off from his baseball writing job to spend in bed, fighting tuberculosis. He won and returned to work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edgar Munzel and Gordon Cobbledick were the recipients of the 1977 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Edgar Herman Munzel first covered baseball in the spring of 1929 when Chicago Herald-Examiner sports editor Warren Brown assigned the 22-year-old to spring training with the White Sox. He continued covering Chicago baseball with the Herald-Examiner and, later, the Sun-Times, until his retirement after 8,000 big league games and 43 baseball seasons.

Quiet and mild-mannered, Munzel was nicknamed "The Mouse." His consistent and durable copy was his trademark, even when the game he covered was one-sided, sloppy or insignificant.

Munzel joined the Baseball Writers' Association of America in 1929 and at one time served as president of the organization. All branches of the game relied on his accuracy and judgment, and his impeccable baseball knowledge and experience proved invaluable while a member of the Hall of Fame Committee on Baseball Veterans.

A true gentleman of the press, Munzel upheld the dignity of the journalist-scorer for decades.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Below, right, photo/entry for Who's Who in ML Baseball, edited by Harold (Speed) Johnson, 1933, pp. 510.

PITTSBURGH -UPI —
Funeral services will be held Wednesday for Edward F. Balinger, 97, retired baseball writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Balinger, who retired in 1946 after covering the Pittsburgh Pirates for 43 years, had suffered a stroke several years ago and was confined to his Wilkinsburg home.

Hugh was instrumental in uncovering the 'Black Sox Scandal'. He helped found the Baseball Writer's Association in 1908 - 1909. Hugh conducted 'The Wake of the News' from June 9, 1912 - June, 1913, after death of its originator, Hugh Keough, Hugh wrote it until Ring Lardner took it over. It's believed to be the oldest, continuous sports column in the US.

Authored:
Touching Second, by John J. Evers/Hugh Fullerton, 1910
'The Wonders of Pitching.' Illustrated with [20] photographs by Burke & Atwell and Paul Thompson
BY HEK" IN THE WAKE OF THE NEWS. A COLLECTION OF THE WRITINGS OF THE LATE HUGH EDMUND KEOUGH
BASEBALL: IN THE BIG LEAGUES, by Johnnie Evers/Hugh S. Fullerton
The Bride and The Pennant, by Frank Chance (possibly ghostwritten by Hugh Fullerton)
Jimmy Kirkland of the Shasta Boys' Team, 1915.
Jimmy Kirkland of the Cascade College Team, 1915.
Jimmy Kirkland and the Plot for a Pennant, 1915.
Tales of the Turf, 1922.
Racing Yarns, 1924.
Two-fisted Jeff, 1929.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hugh Fullerton was the recipient of the 1964 J.G. Taylor Spink Award.

Starting as a 16-year-old newspaper cub in Cincinnati, Hugh Fullerton wrote baseball columns and edited sports pages in Chicago, New York, Columbus (Ohio), and Philadelphia for nearly half a century.

A main figure in establishing the press box as an office of authority on baseball, Fullerton was one of the founding fathers of the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He was best known for perfecting a system of "dope" predictions for the outcome of the World Series. His greatest pride was discovering Ring Lardner, Charles E. Van Loan, and Irving Sanborn, men of baseball letters. Fullerton, along with others such as Lardner and James Isaminger, was instrumental in revealing the full story of the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal, a landmark event that shaped the future of baseball.

A striking personality, Fullerton was personally acquainted with an extraordinary number of people. Hughie, as he was known to his close friends, died in Dunedin, Florida, December 27, 1945.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------Biography Resource Center:
Contemporary Authors Online, Thomson Gale, 2007.
Hugh Fullerton parlayed his devotion to baseball into a noteworthy sportswriting career. He was well liked among his colleagues and among the players with whom he spent much of his time on the road. He predicted the White Sox' upset victory over the Cubs in the 1906 World Series, an all-Chicago event, and helped expose the Black Sox scandal of the 1919 World Series that shook the sport. As a recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for writing excellence, he is enshrined in the writers' wing of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Fullerton grew up in Hillsboro, Ohio and wrote for the local newspaper while still in high school. He worked for the Cincinnati Enquirer at age sixteen, and became its baseball reporter. In 1891 Fullerton enrolled at Ohio State University, and was the catcher for the Buckeyes' baseball team. During the summer Fullerton played second base in the Iron and Oil League's franchise in Olean, New York. In 1892 he left school over an incident involving the theft of a professor's pig, and after unsuccessful attempts at playing baseball for a couple of Eastern universities without enrolling, Fullerton returned to the Enquirer. One year later he ventured to Chicago, where sports reporting was rapidly growing.

Fullerton wrote in a Saturday Evening Post article: "The papers of Chicago in those days [the late 1880s] were unlike any printed anywhere else. They were written largely in the language that the wild growing young city understood. They had individuality. . . . There was nothing sedate or dignified about them except the editorial pages and the stockyards reports. They were boisterous, at times rough; they lacked dignity, perhaps, but they were readable, entertaining and amusing." Fullerton, drawing on his knowledge of the sport, depended heavily on statistical analysis. Fullerton was more methodical than humorous, and developed relationships with players. The players, in turn, gave many interesting, exclusive interviews, and often provided Fullerton with scoops. An American Magazine writer in 1912 referred to Fullerton as "one of the few baseball writers who can 'pan' a ball player in picturesque detail and still hold his friendship; for the player knows that Fullerton is fair and will be quick enough to change when there is cause for praise."

In 1906 Fullerton stood alone in choosing the White Sox, a decided underdog, over the Cubs--also called the Spuds--in the World Series. The National League champion Cubs won 116 games, a total matched only by the Seattle Mariners in 2001, whereas the White Sox, despite winning the pennant, were last in the American League in both batting average and home runs. Fullerton explained his reasoning: "I took a large Faber lead pencil, nine sheets of white glazed copy paper, and figured it out." He looked at pitching, batting averages and fielding abilities, determining each team's strengths and weaknesses.

This prediction, however, was published post-facto. The Tribune ran it the day after the best-of-nine series ended--the White Sox prevailed, five games to three--making some critics question its authenticity. A note from the editor seemingly assuaged doubters. According to Tom Nawrocki, writing in Dictionary of Literary Biography, the note said: "When it was known that two pennants would come to Chicago, H. S. Fullerton of 'The Tribune' wrote an analysis of the two teams, telling why the White Sox would win the world's championship. A man in authority refused to take a chance in printing Mr. Fullerton's forecast, but it has been verified so remarkably by the games as played that it is now printed just as it was written." The article's publication after the series is seldom noted, though Fullerton successfully picked five of the next six winners.

While Fullerton was covering the 1919 World Series between the White Sox and Cincinnati Reds for the Chicago Herald and Examiner, Bill Burns, an old acquaintance and former White Sox pitcher who became known as a professional gambler, told him he should put all his money on the Reds, who were heavy underdogs. Fullerton, with help from former pitching great Christy Mathewson, who was covering the series for the New York Evening World, immediately looked into his hunch that the series was fixed, despite denials and ridicule from some of baseball's management. Fullerton noticed some suspicious-looking errors in the first game, which Cincinnati won 9-1, and another known gambler confirmed Fullerton's worst fears during the eighth and final game, when the man told Fullerton that the first inning would be "huge." White Sox starting pitcher Claude "Lefty" Williams, in fact, gave up four consecutive hits and three runs in the first inning of the Reds' 10-5 victory.

Outraged, Fullerton wrote an article he hoped would be a call to action: "Is Big League Baseball Being Run for Gamblers, with Ballplayers in the Deal?" Although the Chicago Herald and Examiner refused to print it, the New York Evening World featured the story on the front page. For nearly a year, Fullerton endured attacks and mockery, but he was vindicated in September of 1920 when members of the White Sox went before a grand jury and testified that they had indeed to fix the 1919 World Series. After this, Nawrocki noted, Fullerton "had become the semiofficial voice of baseball's antiestablishment."

Fullerton's lasting contributions are his "Ten Commandments of Sports": "Thou shalt not quit," "alibi," "gloat," "sulk," "take unfair advantage," "ask odds thou are unwilling to give," or "underestimate an opponent or overestimate thyself," and "thou shalt always be willing to give the benefit of the doubt." In his last two commandments, Fullerton underscores his commitment to integrity and virtue. The ninth one states: "Remember that the game is the thing, and he who thinks otherwise is no true sportsman." The final one reads: "Honor the game thou playest, for he who plays the game straight and hard wins even when he loses."

Conducted Wake of the News for Chicago Tribune from June 14, 1937 to his death in 1955.
He'd inherited this oldest, most prestigious/continuous of all sports columns from his predecessor, Harvey Woodruff.

October 17, 1953: Nat. Football Hall of Fame presentation at Notre Dame Pittsburgh game. L-R: Father Edmund Joyce, Notre Dame's Executive VP; Arch Ward; Mrs. Knute (Bonnie) Rockne; Mrs. Paul Taylor, George Gipp's sister; Ed Krause, Notre Dame Athletic Director; Elmer Layden, one of the "four horsemen" of Notre Dame. Layden, George Gipp, and Knute Rockne were the three elected to the Football Hall of Fame. As Rockne and Gipp are deceased, the former's widow and the latter's sister accepted the certificates.

Wikipedia
Lyall F. Smith (November 22, 1914 – October 8, 1991) was an American sportswriter and sports editor. He was the sports editor and columnist for the Detroit Free Press from 1945 to 1965 and the president of the Baseball Writers Association of America from 1955 to 1956. He later served as the public relations director and business manager for the Detroit Lions from 1965 to 1980.

Early years
A native of Peoria, Illinois, he attended Bradley University and the University of Illinois. He was inducted into the Bradley University Athletic Hall of Fame in 1950.
Smith began his career in journalism as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News. He spent seven years with the Chicago Daily News from 1938 to 1945. He claimed to have given the "Whiz Kids" nickname to the 1943 Illinois basketball team.

Detroit Free Press
In March 1945, Smith was hired as the sports editor and columnist at the Detroit Free Press, a position he held until 1965.

During his time with the Free Press Smith was included in the committee of baseball writers charged with selecting the American League Most Valuable Player.

In 1947, Smith became involved in a controversy over competing claims to the national collegiate football championship by undefeated teams from Notre Dame and Michigan. Notre Dame was ranked No. 1 in the final regular season AP Poll, but Michigan went on to defeat USC by a score of 49-0 in the Rose Bowl. Smith urged the Associated Press to conduct a post-bowl poll, arguing that Michigan had defeated three common opponents by larger margins than Notre Dame and had a tougher schedule. After Smith's comments, the AP agreed to conduct a post-bowl poll, the first of its kind, and Michigan was selected as the national champion in that poll by a vote of 226 to 119. After the results were tallied, Smith wrote in The Sporting News, "Michigan won another football battle!"

Also in January 1947, Smith broke the story of the Detroit Tigers' decision to sell Hank Greenberg to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Smith reported that Tigers owner Walter O. Briggs had read comments from Greenberg about his desire to play for the Yankees and concluded that "Greenberg was ungrateful, unkind and unfair to Detroit," and ordered the team's general manager to "get rid of Hank."

In August 1948, three days after the death of Babe Ruth from cancer, Smith proposed that Major League Baseball designate September 30, 1948 as "Babe Ruth Day" and that all proceeds from games played on that day be donated to cancer research.

Smith's 1948 tribute to Harry Heilmann, former batting champ and radio voice of the tigers, was published in The Sporting News. Smith wrote:
"He is so good that if he gets any better there'll be no more attendance records set at Briggs Stadium. After all, who wants to leave that nice, soft easy chair to be pushed around with 50,000 other fans when he can stay right at home and get a word picture ... with anectodes ... of the game. Only thing wrong with his broadcasts is that you hate to get out of your chair and rush to the ice box to get a bottle of that cool stuff he mentions now and then."

In October 1954, Smith was elected as the vice president of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

In the spring of 1955, Smith asked readers to submit ideas for a nickname for the Tigers' star right-fielder Al Kaline. From the submissions, Smith chose "Salty," which the reader explained, "After all, salt means alkaline."

In September 1955, he was elected as the president of the Baseball Writers Association of America and served in that role in 1956. Smith also served as a director of the Football Writers Association of America for several years.

Smith was chosen as the chief scorer for the 1956 World Series, and was the scorer for Don Larsen's perfect game in the World Series. Fellow sportswriter Arthur Daley noted, "By the ninth inning, the most nervous people in the ball park, bar none, were the three official scorers, Lyall Smith of Detroit and his two assistants ... They were terrified that a questionable decision would confront them and ruin Larsen's performance for posterity." Larsen, too, acknowledged that he was not the only nervous person at Yankee Stadium as the game progressed, acknowledging the scrutiny that would be given to any close calls by Smith as he sat in the press box as the official scorer.

In May 1965, Smith was chosen to serve a five-year term on the board of directors of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.

Detroit Lions
In September 1965, Smith left the Free Press to accept a position as the public relations director for the Detroit Lions. In January 1967, Smith took on the additional title and responsibility as the Lions' business manager. Over the next 15 years, Smith was employed by the Lions as their public relations director, business manager, and director of marketing. When the Lions moved to the Pontiac Silverdome in 1975, Smith was responsible for coordinating the move and organized an exhibition day game in August 1975 for fans to orient themselves and tour the new facility. He remained with the Lions throughout the 1970s.

Death
Smith died of heart failure at in 1991 at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Peoria Journal Star obituary (IL), October 11, 1991

Detroit News' obituary, October 10, 1991, pp. D2.
Lyall Smith, Ex-Sports Editor and Lions Official, Dies at 76
Lyall Smith, a former sportsrwiter and business manager for the Detroit Lions, died of heart failure Oct 8, 1991 in Detroit. He was 76.
February 27, 1947: Roy Cullenbine / Lyall Smith-------------------------------------------------------------1964.